Chapter 5 - Part 1

Chapter 5 – Tom

We lost Dad somewhere near the beginning of the house of mirrors. You’d think he’d try harder to stay with us. Then again, maybe it makes sense that he wouldn’t. The maze seemed to be completely empty except for us and Ken, of course, with all his questions. We did run into one other lady. We found her in a room of distorted mirrors. Unlike some of the other distorted mirrors, these made you look better than you did in normal life – which was still a lie, but seemed a nice one. The lady proved that was definitely wrong.

Mom approached her when we found her in that room of mirrors. She had sat down to smile at herself in the mirrors. “Can we help you?” Mom asked. “Did you get stuck here? Would you like to come with us?”

The woman looked up at Mom in surprise. “Stuck?” she asked. “No, I’m not stuck. I like it here. Everything is nice here. Just the way it should be.” She nodded and continued to stare at her beautified reflection in the mirror. She seemed to have a hard time taking her eyes off of it to give us even a passing glance. I suppose it took a lot of work to keep the illusion real for her. Eventually she ignored us completely and wouldn’t respond to any of our questions.

It gave me the creeps. Why would you want to stay in a make-believe world? Where was her family? Didn’t she care? Didn’t she want to check and see if they were really alright? They probably needed her. Kids need their parents. This I knew. I didn’t even want to want to be with my parents and I still did. It was enough to rip me apart. A lot of times it did.

We gladly left the room with the vacant-eyed woman and found ourselves in another room of twisted mirrors. I groaned, “Enough already. When are we going to get out of here?”

“It’s fun!” Brittney piped up.

“It is not fun!” I hissed at her. “These halls go on forever and my feet hurt and I am sick and tired of seeing myself twisted and squashed and otherwise completely messed-up!”

Brittney backed away from me and in her eyes, for just a second, I saw the same look in her eyes that I have seen in my mom’s eyes when she is scared of my dad. I froze in horror. I looked in the mirror and it was still me looking back at me and not my dad. Still, I knew what I had seen in Brittney’s eyes. Was I turning into my dad?

I was six when Brittney was born. I was used to having mom and dad to myself. I had watched her carefully for some time after she was born to see what she was like and whether I would like having someone else be part of our family. One day some kid had teased me at school and I came home still hurting from what he had said. I remember looking over the edge of Brittney’s seat when I got home from school that day, watching as one of my tears fell on her blanket. That was when she reached up and wrapped her little hand around my finger. I looked at my finger and her hand and then at her face and that was when I knew that having a little sister was wonderful. Someone had picked up this baby and put it in this family and given me a pocket of love.

Mom had walked by us then and said, “Be gentle with Brittney, Tommy.”

“I will,” I had murmured. “I will.”

I remember another time. I was in my room. It was night and I should have been sleeping, but my dad was yelling at my mom about something. That was when I was used to feeling the most alone – the most aware of what would happen if the universe exploded around me. Then my door cracked open just the tiniest bit, and three-year-old Brittney’s tiny feet came hurrying across my floor and suddenly she was at my bed struggling to climb up the side. I reached down and lifted her into bed with me. She buried her head in my shoulder and wrapped her arms tightly around my neck.

“Shhh, Brittney,” I had soothed “It will be all right. You can sleep with me.” Again I felt that having a little sister was wonderful. I was no longer alone! Mom found us the next morning sound asleep with Brittney’s arms still locked around my neck.

Why are things more complicated when you grow up? I don’t know. Things just seemed to get worse and it seemed so unfair. I went from being angry sometimes, to being angry all the time. I can’t remember a day in the last six months that I haven’t been angry at somebody for at least half of it.

It was when I tried football that things fell apart between Britt and me. I hate football. I’m angry that I ever had to play football. I played football because my mom asked me to do it for my dad. So I alternated between being angry at my mom for asking and being mad at my dad for not noticing all that I was sacrificing “for him.” One day I came home from practice sore and muddy and emotionally bruised from the coach’s yelling. As I walked in the door, my dad saw me and said, “Go get cleaned up! You’re filthy.” It was like twisting the knife, you know? That was when I noticed that Brittney was curled up next to Dad. He had his arm around her and as I watched, he went back to reading her a book. How come Brittney could get attention from Dad just by bringing him a book and here I was killing myself on the football field and all it earned me were his sneers.

I went to my room and took off my football gear for the last time. I was done with football. I was done with trying. And I was done with Brittney. That was that.

Ken wanted me to be honest, did he? That was the only way to find our way out, was it? I turned fiercely back toward Brittney and Mom. “I hate how Dad always yells at you, Mom, and I hate how you just sit and take it. Why can’t you stand up for yourself?”

Mom’s eyes widened and started to fill with tears. My heart twisted inside of me. ‘Yeah Ken, this honesty thing is really helping tons. What a great idea!’ I had already started, though, and this was no time to stop.

“And you, Brittney!” I steeled myself as she flinched away from me. “How can you cozy up to Dad like you do? I hate seeing you all lovey-dovey with dad! It makes me wish you had never been born!”

Mom gasped. I closed my eyes to block out Brittney’s face, but I was too late. I saw it crumple in on itself. I put out my hand to steady myself against one of the mirrors, but instead I found that there was nothing there and suddenly, instead of standing in the house of mirrors, I was falling.

**

We fell into cold water with a loud splash. I worried that it wouldn’t be very deep, out here in the cornfields. It was, after all, a traveling carnival, but I plunged into the water and didn’t touch the bottom. I swam upwards beating my arms and legs until my head broke the surface and I took in great gulps of air. On either side of me, Mom and Brittney broke the surface, as well and gasped in the air.

I looked around. We seemed to be in a cave, although I couldn’t see an opening and it didn’t seem to be closed at either end. No. It must be more of a tunnel, I decided. Also, the water was moving, although you almost couldn’t tell because it was moving so slowly. Still, that would make it a river we had fallen into. It was one more clue to where we might be.

“It’s the Tunnel of Love!” Brittney said in triumph. I looked around at the walls then, and noticed for the first time, that although it was dark, you could make out a faint glittering on the walls and the shapes of hearts here and there.

“How appropriate,” I thought miserably. I was still throbbing from the guilt of having hurt my mom and sister just moments before. Any shred of hope I might have once held in this carnival had now left me with only bitterness and disappointment left in its place.

“You guys alright?” We turned to see Dad swimming toward us. I felt relief at seeing him again and then felt angry at myself for that familiar desire to be with him. I tried to steel myself and lock myself up tight once again.

“Brittney says we’re in the Tunnel of Love,” Mom said to Dad as he joined our little group.

“Very perceptive, Britt,” Dad said. “I’d say, you’re right.”

The light wasn’t very good, but Dad looked different. Abashed almost. Almost like he was afraid to be with us, or that he didn’t quite know how to act around us. That was sure different. And different was good. What had happened to him in the house of mirrors? Maybe it had gone better for him than it had for us. Hope flared traitorously up in me again, before I smashed it back down and secured the lid.

“I saw a boat go by a few minutes ago,” Dad said. “I swam toward it hard, but I couldn’t reach it in time before it got away.”

He looked around speculatively. “Maybe if we swim over towards the middle, then we will already be in its path when another one comes. Then we can hang on or climb in. Who knows what other surprises might be around the bend?”

Chapter 4 - Part 2

It was gloomy inside and it took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the low lighting. When they did, we were surrounded by a path of mirrors set at odd angles and seeming to trail on in an infinite number of directions for an infinite number of miles.

“We’ll never find our way through here,” Sonya moaned behind me.

Brittney giggled, “This’ll be fun!”

I started forward. I could see in the mirrors that the others followed me. When I saw Sonya turn, I turned to follow her, but smacked my nose into the mirror in front of me. I turned again trying to find the opening, but saw four different places where my family all seemed to be leaving at once. I chose one, but again smacked myself in the nose. I turned again, but now I could see no one. That is, I could see no one but me reflected back hundreds of times in the mirrors around me.

“Great!” I sighed. I put my hand out to feel the walls. When I came to an opening I took it only to be surrounded by reflections of myself once again. The difference in this room, though was that the mirrors were distorted in some way, making my head look grotesquely large, my chest tiny, and my waist large. It made my stomach turn for real. Where was Brittney and her child’s sense of humor when I needed her?

I started forward and smacked my nose again before I remembered to put my fingers against the wall. I traveled around the room and then traveled again. Of course, I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed that I had been completely around the room twice – that would mean I had made it around at least once for sure. Still, I found no opening – not even the one from which I had entered. The hundreds of images of my distorted head were making me physically sick. I closed my eyes and leaned back against one of the mirrors. When I finally forced myself to open my eyes again, I was no longer alone in the room.

That man was there. What had he said his name was? Ken. That was it. I reached out my hand to see if he were real or just another illusion of the room. I touched the softness of his shirt and his voice boomed out in a mighty laugh. “Afraid I’m not real are ya’ Sam?” he asked.

I looked at him warily. “It wouldn’t surprise me in this crazy place.”

“Oh, I’m real,” he assured me. “I’m very real.”

“Great!” I said, “Then you can tell me how to get out of here.”

“Of course!” Ken said.

I waited but he said nothing more. “But . . .” I ventured, “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“I could,” he said, “But you already know the answer yourself.”

He smiled. I shook my head.

“It’d be a lot easier without all these distorted mirrors,” I grumbled.

For some reason, Ken looked pleased when I said this. “It would! Wouldn’t it?” he asked. “Why would it be easier, Sam?”

“Why do you ask so many questions?” I shot back at him.

“How else will we find the answers?” he replied with wide-eyed innocence.

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. It would be easier to get out of here without the mirrors because I can’t see where I am going!”

“Don’t the mirrors reflect reality back to you?” Ken asked again.

“Yes, Mr. Smart Cracker, but not exactly as it is. These mirrors distort the truth. Even the ones in the other room were set at such odd angles that they reflected things that I wasn’t looking at – or that I wasn’t meaning to look at. What I mean is, I thought I was looking at one thing and found that I was looking at another.”

“And that makes it hard to find where you are going?” he asked.

“Extremely,” I said keeping my eyes locked on his so that I didn’t have to see the wavering image of myself on all the walls.

“Are we sometimes like mirrors to one another, do you think, Sam?”

“Like mirrors to one another?” I repeated.

“Do you ever check your reality with the reality of another person?” he asked.

“I suppose so,” I said thinking of the little boy I had once been who was forever shunned from his mother’s side.

“Then, wouldn’t it follow that we should be very careful that what we reflect back to other people be as honest as possible -- to avoid distortion, that is.”

I thought about that. Here in the house of mirrors, that was absolutely true. But in the real world, honesty was complicated. Honesty could get people hurt. Not to mention, things could be true for you one moment, and not true the next.

Ken was watching me carefully. Suddenly, the room changed from mirrors to a sort of movie screen and on every screen was a reenactment of the last time Sonya had sung. My heart melted to see her sing again. She was so beautiful Just as quickly, my heart seized up in my chest as I saw her singing with that man. My face hardened and I turned away. At least I tried to turn away, but there she was on the other wall as well. I turned again and again. I crumbled to the floor in front of Ken with my head in my arms.

“You didn’t really want Sonya to stop singing, did you Sam? Tell me honestly – tell yourself honestly, what did you feel at that recital?”

I could feel sobs building up in my chest. “How could I tell her that? How could I tell her that when I saw her with that man, I saw what she meant to me and I know what I am. It makes no sense for her to choose me, but I need her and I can’t let her get away. I can’t! It would kill me. It would kill me.”

Ken waited a moment as I sobbed into the quiet. Then he said, “Now that, sir, is emotional honesty. But you reflected something different to Sonya that day, didn’t you? And when you did, you distorted her path, so that when she tried to follow you, she was lost. You created the maze that lost her. Even if she suspected your real feelings, how could she talk to you about them when you were not being honest with her – when you were not being honest with yourself?”

I sat up and wiped my eyes. “How can I find her again?” I realized that I was no longer talking about the maze of mirrors in Ken’s carnival, but about my own life.

“Who caused the problem?” Ken asked.

I had a co-worker once who said that only fools confess. I was past that now. There were other things more important. “I did,” I said.

Ken reached down and offered me his hand, pleased with me again. “Then who has the responsibility to make it right?” he asked.

I took his hand and stood up. “I do,” I said and when I did, I realized with wonderment that I felt a sense of power that I hadn’t felt for a long time.

“Why does it feel good to say I’ve done something wrong?” I asked Ken.

“Have you been avoiding responsibility?” Ken asked me. “Have you been breaking your commitments?”

Suddenly the mirrors changed again only this time they showed Tom and I in the car before his first day of football practice. He looked so scared. Why hadn’t I noticed before? He certainly hadn’t distorted anything for me, but I hadn’t been looking, had I? He was asking for my promise that I’d come pick him up after the practice. I watched as I promised him.

This hurt, too. I hate that kind of hurt – that kind of disappointment in me. I pushed it away. “I had a meeting,” I told Ken. “No one should be held to commitments that are not fair.”

Ken looked at me for a long minute. “Do you want to have a boy who trusts his dad – a boy who knows his dad is telling him the truth to lead him the right way through the maze of life?”

“It was just a stupid football practice!” I hollered at Ken.

“Was it?” Ken asked. “Or was it a broken promise? A lack of integrity? What did it mean to your boy?”

“Enough!” I roared. “Enough!” I swung around to plant my fists through the screens, the mirrors on all sides, but found instead, to my amazement, nothing to stop my momentum and suddenly I was falling – falling through the floor.